almerimartoday

I was looking around on the internet and found the interesting interview here with a poker player with an interest in golf. Among other things it describes the story of how Dusty Schmidt lost his amateur golfer status.

Over the last few days I and the company I use for hosting have been trying to contact Telefonica to get them to resolve a technical issue. I found that Telefonica support was somewhat hit and miss.

Read More for details.

Read More to see our El Arroz Thursday special menu this week. 3 courses and a drink (beer, glass of house wine, soft drink) for only 10 euros a person. Available from 8pm to 9pm.

If you definitely intend to take advantage of this offer it would help us if you reserve in advance so we can plan how much food to prepare.

For those of you who wish to practive their Spanish it appears that the Ideal site has published more information about the alleged corruption scandal in El Ejido. You can read more here and here.

Apparently investigations have been going on for 3 years and evidence includes taped phone conversations amongst other things. 

After several days without rain, the heavens opened overnight and into this morning. The regular Tuesday golf organised by Marianne and Sune has been rescheduled to start from 1pm today. The forecast certainly looked better this afternoon.

Looking out the window, the skies are brightening and little wind so a good decision to delay the start .

 

UPDATED: 8 MARCH - added 2 more people.

Further to the earlier story here from Alan and Judi about their recent trip to a greenhouse near Almerimar.

We have now arranged a group visit for anyone that might be interested. It will take place at 5pm on Thursday 18 March and will last about 2 hours. The maximum cost is 9 euros a person but it may be a little cheaper if we get a good sized group together.

Read More for details.

For some time now the gardeners who look after the public areas in Almerimar have been on strike following the fall out from the alleged corruption scandal at El Ejido council.

Last Friday I saw someone in one of the familiar yellow jackets weeding the grass not far from our apartment. Also, today, when taking Jules back to the airport, we spotted a number of gardeners pruning the palm trees and cutting the grass on the road down the hill into Almerimar.

I hope we soon see some gardeners spraying for mossies.

Only 12 per cent of Spanish people still believe that domestic chores and child-raising are a women's prerogative.

John does the cooking and window cleaning in our household so I suppose I cannot complain too much.

Thankfully, in Spain, 88 per cent of people disagreed with this notion, putting the country ahead of Germany's 86 per cent and Belgium's 84 per cent. ThinkSPAIN has the full story here.

Thanks to Iain for his latest poem for the site.

Read More to read the poem.

It is a Bahía San Miguel golf competition today. I was up very early as I had an 8:08 tee time. When I got to the first tee the mossies started flying around me.

As I played I found that the course was infested with mossies. I managed 8 holes but after that I had had enough and walked off the course.

I  feel sorry for the owners of the course as they have been spraying the course but the mossies keep coming back as the council are not spraying the public garden areas here in Almerimar.

As usual we will be publishing the menu each week on this site.

Our trip out to Cádiar included a wander around the market. The market days are the 3rd and 18th of each month. This month's market was a lot smaller than normal according to Jane who runs Cueva de Aladin where we had lunch. We don´t know why it was smaller this time.

Mary and Wendy both snapped up a few bargains from the market.  Mary bought a couple of jumpers for 5 euros a go and Wendy found a rather nice little black wool number for 10 euros.

Here we are all wrapped up warm as you can see. It was quite a bit cooler there compared to Almerimar.

Read more.

 

We have added the photos from the dinner at Mar Azul last night to thegallery on the Almerimar Today Golf site here.

I really enjoyed my meal. The fish soup was great and the chicken breast was pretty good as well. The selection of little pieces of dessert were also very pleasant. Drinks were brought to the table when you asked for them.

I feel they did a good job and Jacqui, Alan, Sharon all said we would consider using the venue again.

So that was the last special event of this season.  Back to the normal Friday golf competitions throughout the year until the Woodsly Cup in October 2010.

Well done to the Unders for a 7 vs 2 victory in the Almerimar Today golf competition today.

It was a shame that the blue and yellow tees were so close together that it meant that the Overs men didn´t have as much advantage as we would have liked. We will have to make different arrangements for next year to ensure that the match is a little closer.

Time now to prepare the photos and results for the presentation dinner at Mar Azul this evening.

You  can see the results from the day here and the photos in the Gallery on the Almerimar Today site.

Typically Spanish has this story about Ryanair´s decision to cancel some routes out of Granada... 

A difference of opinion between the Granada Provincial Government, controlled by the Socialists, and Granada City Hall, controlled by the PP, is being blamed for the departure of Ryanair services from Granada-Jaén, Federico García Lorca airport.

The argument was over the subsidy being paid to the airline and the airline says it will leave unless the 1.3 million € agreed in 2005 is paid, with the airline speaking of the ‘excessive costs’ at the airport. For now, four of the six flight destinations operated by the airline from Granada are cancelled – those are the services to London, Liverpool, Girona and Madrid.

Following our earlier visit to Cádiar (see here) we went back there yesterday for market day and to try out the Thai lunchtime menu at Cueva de Aladin. This time Jacqui and I were accompanied by Mary B and her friend Wendy.

The food was great and superb value for money. 

Read More for details.

Just back from a day trip to Cádiar with Mary B and her friend Wendy. We will publish a story about this when we get a chance.

Please note that we have had some drop-outs through illness we have had to revise the draw for the Overs vs Unders golf this coming Friday. See here for the revised draw.

Don´t forget that there is a Bahía San Miguel golf competition at Almerimar this coming Sunday (7 March). The entry sheet is now up on the noticeboardby the pro shop.

We have now done the draw for the Overs v Unders golf competition this coming Friday. We intended to do the draw straight after the prizegiving at the Tuesday golf competition today but we had to rework the teams this afternoon before we could do the draw. Therefore, we held the draw in our apartment earlier this evening with the assistance of John Wi and Cynthia who witnessed the draw once we had the final teams assembled. 

You can view the draw here on the Almerimar Today Golf site.

The draw produced some great matches and I am sure it will be a well fought battle that will be a lot of fun. As I am sure the evening and entertainment at Mar Azul will be.

Inés has just been in touch to remind us that El Arroz reopens again this coming Friday (5 March).

Also, don´t forget that we have organised a group night out at El Arroz on Tuesday 9 March. If you would like to come along and join us for what we hope will be a great evening at a wonderful restaurant here in Almerimar please get in touch soon. See here for more details.

Thanks to Iain for the latest poem for the site. Not sure what inspired it but I wish it was Middlebrough FC.

Here is a new poem for the website. It´s a Shadorma, a Spanish poetic form with a 3/5/3/3/7/5 syllable count.

You may have noticed that not much has been posted on the site in the last few days. That has been because we have been to the UK for a brief visit to see family there.

We are now back in Almerimar and are very happy to be here. We will start posting more stuff again once we have caught up with various things here.

In the meantime just a few reminders:

It is a bank holiday tomorrow (Monday) so don´t expect many shops to be open.

We have to finalise details for the Overs vs. Unders teams for this coming Friday. So if you have not paid Sharon and selected your menu please do so ASAP.

We are arranging a meal out at El Arroz on Tuesday 9 March. You can see more details here.

Now for a bit of a rest. That early morning Gatwick flight is a bit of a killer.

Two months of almost continual rain has seen Andalucia suffer it's wettest winter ever.

The weather pattern, not seen for 13 years, has caused over a billion euros of damage from floods.

The two months of December and January were already the fourth rainest on record. Read more here.

Read the story here on the Guardian website.

The Spanish News site has a story here about Aifos, a Malaga based company that has been involved in some developments in Almerimar.

Congratulations to Daisy and Doreen on the arrival of their first grandchild today. A grandson (to be named) who weighed in at a healthy 81b 10oz.

Thanks to Alan & Judi for this information. We have planned to do such a visit at some point so perhaps we will try to organise a group visit if people are interested.

Read More to read the story.

The article here on the Guardian site tells of possible upcoming strife here in Spain due to the current financial situation.

It looks like farmers in the area around Almerimar may get some compensation for the damage caused. See here on the Euro Weekly News site.

The story here on the Euro Weekly News site explains the downturn in speeding fines.